To suit their client's training schedules resistance training coaches and personal trainers use various training methods to increase volume of exercise in short duration. Also professional bodybuilders are always in search and experiment with various new training modalities to stimulate their maximally muscles. Combining 2 or more exercises consecutively or simultaneously with minimal rest, is a training modality often used by professionals and strength training coaches to increase muscular endurance and hypertrophy.
Superset is one such resistance training strategy under combination exercises, wherein consecutive performance of 2 exercises for same or different muscle group is performed with minimal or no rest in between sets. This method maximally stimulates the exercising muscle group, as the metabolic demand for workout is greater due to longer duration of each set with minimal or no rest in between 2 exercises, although the duration of overall exercise session is less.
While performing non body weight exercises in Supersets, it is important to select weights wisely, which can be tolerated by the weakest of the exercising muscle in sequence, to avoid injuries. One must always choose weight which matches both the exercises to be performed in Supersets. Also in Supersets complete all the desired repetition of first exercise set followed by consecutive performance of second exercise set with minimum rest in between both the sets and again repeating the same pattern till the need to take break for recovery. Such exercising strategies is extremely challenging as its puts maximum load on both the endurance as well as strength aspects working muscles.
A Superset can be a Set of 10 reps (repetitions) of push-ups followed by a Set of 10 reps of pull ups, an example of body weight exercise, while a Set of 10 reps of bench press followed by a Set of 10 reps of seated rows is an example of a non-bodyweight exercise with rest in between both the Sets and repeating the pattern till fatigue. A Set is a consecutive performance of a particular number of repetition (reps) of same exercise.
There can be 2 types of Supersets exercise patterns, Opposing Muscle Groups Supersets and Same Muscle Group Supersets as follows;
Opposing Muscle Group Supersets: In this type of workout 2 exercises of opposing muscle groups are selected such as performing 1 upper body followed by 1 lower body exercise without rest in between sets (eg. A Set of leg press followed by a Set of bench press) or performing 2 upper body exercise but for opposing muscle (eg. A Set of Biceps Curl followed by a Set of Triceps Curl.) In this type although there is no rest between Sets, however using opposite muscle groups consecutively, allows the time for recovery to the non-working muscles. Hence the over-all length of the each Set (number of reps performed) can be more, maximally challenging the endurance aspects of the working muscles.
Same Muscle Group Supersets: This type of Superset includes 2 exercises of same muscle group (eg. A Set of push-ups followed by a Set of Bench Press) or (A Set of Squat followed by a Set of Leg Press on machine). This type of same muscle group workout puts more emphasis on strength aspects of working muscles. One must always carefully selects the manageable weights while doing same muscle group Superset training for both the exercises in order to avoid injuries as this type of training is extremely challenging for working muscles.
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Nutan Khimasiya certified Fitness and Nutrition expert. Nutan Khimasiya is internationally certified Fitness and Nutrition expert from ACSM-Clinical Nutrition, K11-Sports Nutrit..
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